Flash Animation Gets Weird

It’s no secret now that Weird Al Yankovic has returned to greatness. He landed the first Top 10 single of his career only a few weeks ago with ‘White & Nerdy,’ which is accompanied by a hysterical video that Yankovich directed himself.

But Al turned to Flash animation directors for several of the other tracks on ‘Straight Outta Lynwood,’ which is currently in the top 25 albums on Amazon.

You’ve probably seen John K’s (‘Ren & Stimpy’) music video for ‘Close But No Cigar,’ which was animated in Flash at Copernicus Studios.

John and Katie Rice handled the layouts, a process catologued at John’s blog in great detail. Weird Al loved the video and had this to say about the results in an interview at About.com:

I’m not a huge fan of Flash animation in general, but this was by far the best Flash that John or I had ever seen – they really blew us away.

Next is a video for ‘Virus Alert,’ created by David Lovelace, the creator of the Flash-animated series ‘Retarded Animal Babies.’

I scoured places like Newgrounds to find talent, and that’s where I came upon Dave’s work. I really liked Dave’s drawing style and his sense of humor, and thought that he’d be a good call for the ‘Virus Alert’ video… I was fortunate enough to get a few animation icons (like Bill Plympton and John Kricfalusi) to sign on to the project, but I also wanted to work with the best and the brightest of the new crop of Internet flash animators.

Lastly, Doug Bressler, the creator of ‘Doogtoons,’ recently animated an interview with Weird Al in Flash.

I couldn’t confirm which software Thomas Lee’s ‘I’ll Sue Ya’ video was produced in, but I’m guessing After Effects, even though Lee is most known for his Flash work on ‘Star Wars Gangsta Rap.’

I also found a few ‘unofficial’ Flash animated Weird Al homages – Ryan Simmon’s animated take on the Weird Al TV show theme song, and Robert Montjoy’s version of ‘Lost Rhapsody.’ Of course, there are several more tracks on the album, and we’ll just have to wait and see which lucky animators are up next.

8 Comments

I think it’s heartening to know that after all these years, John K’s animation still suggest an artist who may need to be locked up for some kind of dangerous and intense psychosis. HE’S THE MAN! I’m serious, he’s awesome.

Hey Aaron, thanks for linking to my “weird Al show ” cartoon! I created that in Jan. 2001 as a porfolio piece which was the best I had done back then. ( I look at it now and cringe! I animated it all with paper and scanned it in too! Ugh!)I never found out if Weird Al himself ever saw it although I tried to send it to his fan club, I never got any response. It’s a great song to animate to. If I were to redo it today, it wouldn’t even resemble what is currently there!

[...] an animation fan, and in the past he’s paired up with a number of small animation houses and individual animators to help produce his music videos. This trend continues for his latest album, titled Alpocalypse, [...]